


Coran Dies At The End

by BetteNoire



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: (Alfor/Coran is background and a little implied), (Coran suffers a lot), (Only tagged the important characters but the paladins also show up and so do Rolo and Nyma), (The violence gets kinda bad so don’t read if you don’t like that), (maybe not too sure), Alcohol, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood, Broken Bones, Death, Emotional Abuse, Food Poisoning, Gen, Gore, Graphic depictions of violence - Freeform, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Major character death - Freeform, Modern AU, Poisoning, Time Loop, Verbal Abuse, Violence, car crash, implied amputation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-06
Updated: 2018-03-06
Packaged: 2019-03-27 02:18:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 9
Words: 19,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13871010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BetteNoire/pseuds/BetteNoire
Summary: Coran finds himself the pawn of a sadistic cat after dying in a car crash who wants him to ‘ascend to Paradise.’ More likely, it’s just trying to kill him. Fun! Will he spend the rest of his days being killed in creative and gory ways, or will he find a way out?(Written for the Coran Big Bang 2017)





	1. The

Café Citrouille was always a pleasure to go to and today was no exception. Coran Smythe opened the double doors to the café before slumping into the nearest seat, his energy drained from a busy day at work and from the drive back. He normally wouldn’t have stopped off here, but a close friend had said he wanted to talk about his daughter and her education. 

“How are you today Mr Smythe?” The waitress calls out to him, notepad at the ready. He smiles, recognising her.

“I’m fine, thanks, Sylvie - though you can drop the formality. Coran is fine.” She nods. “I’m waiting for a friend of mine.” They both had attended the same university a few years back but only had brief conversations. She must be shocked that he still knew her name.

“Do you want to order now or wait until your friend gets here?” He shakes his head.

“I’ll wait until my friend arrives.” Coran turns away from her as she bustles off to serve another customer and he pulls out his phone. He’s got some time to kill, might as well spend it wisely. A few minutes pass and the bell rings multiple times before he sees the person he’s been waiting for steps through the door. 

“What’s up jerkass.” He said sliding into the other seat. Coran lifted his head and smirked. Despite being a dad to a teenage daughter, Alfor was still his stupid old self. 

“Well fuck you too man.” He answered, putting a hand on his chin. “Where’s Allura?” 

Alfor turned to look at the door - empty. The closest thing was either the plant pot or the back end of the line. “She said she was coming here with her friends - if you don’t mind.”

“No way, Allura’s lovely to be around.” He wasn’t lying - Coran really did appreciate Allura. She was fun to be around and intelligent for her age. She had a strong head on her shoulders and it was pretty clear that she had a bright future ahead of her. 

“You sure?” 

“Definitely, man. You really raised her right.” Alfor smiled. At that moment, Sylvie walked back over.

“This your friend, Coran?” She asks, raising her eyebrow with a smirk. He nods in response. “Well, I’ll take it that you're ready to order. What’d ya want?”

Coran ordered the same thing he always got - black coffee. Meanwhile, Alfor got the worst (well in his opinion) drink on the menu - a white chocolate mocha. Sylvie smiled at the two of them after jotting down their orders with her usual purple gel pen before walking away. It only took a few moments for him to slam his hands on the table and glare.

“Wow. Your taste in drinks is almost as lame as you.” Alfor simply chuckled in response.

“Says you. You always get black coffee. Change it up you sleep deprived nerd! Try something new for once.” Coran lay back in his seat and groaned before suddenly getting an idea.

“Only if you don’t order yet another white chocolate mocha, you typical white girl.” Coran holds his hand out and raises an eyebrow, with a smirk. He gets a begrudgingly handshake in response. That’s probably the best victory he’s had in a while.

“You’re evil, you know that right?” Alfor chuckles a moment later. “The evilest person I know.”

He jokingly punches his shoulder in return. “I know.”

The two of them sit together, talking about whatever comes to mind while waiting for their drinks. It was a mostly mindless conversation, never dipping into serious stuff. When Sylvie brought their drinks over, the two briefly fought over who should pay the bill - Alfor of course won. Then the conversations halted to a stop on Coran’s part as he sipped his black coffee. He’s sat in this same seat a few times before, this café a place he often stopped by after work. Except for this time, instead of his own thoughts as a soundtrack to this bliss, he’s got Alfor, chatting away endlessly. He only stops really to sip his drink in between his words, it’s kinda amazing to watch.

Then the bell rings a few times in the span of a few seconds and he stretches his neck back to see who’s entered. While he was expecting to see another group of teenagers, he’s surprised to see Allura and her friends smiling back at him and Alfor. Well mostly smiling. Allura walks over and puts her arm on her dad’s shoulder.

“Hey nerds.”

Alfor glares at her. She lifts her arm off and grins. 

“Glad to see you’re as grumpy as ever dad.” She twirls a strand of her hair around her finger before looking down at the empty drinks on the table. “You guys ordered before we got here?” She gestures to her friends with 'we', mock anger on her face. 

“You took a while, sweetheart,” Alfor responds. Coran rolls his eyes. 

“We got here 10 minutes ago, you know.” Allura’s eyes lighten up.

“See! You can’t talk dad.” She smirks. “Anyway, I’m gonna get our drinks.” She walks off towards the counter. 

Her friends go and sit down at another table nearby. They’re talking loudly enough that he’s certain the whole café can hear, but at least they aren’t sitting at the same table as them again. The last time that happened, they all got thrown out after two of them got into a fight of which one was cooler and started a food fight. Fifteen forks got stuck in the ceiling and one of the employees got a chai latte all over them. He can see the two of them already arguing again. According to Allura, they’re dating. Surprisingly.

It takes a few minutes before Allura comes back, her drink in hand. She slides in next to her father and proceeds to drink rapidly. Alfor puts his hand on hers.

“Slowly. Don’t want to give yourself a brain freeze.” She nods briefly before returning to it the same speed. He puts his face in his hands. “Why do I even try…” he groans into his hands.

“If she wants a brain freeze, let her.” Coran comments, getting up to put his empty drink container in the bin. When he returns to his seat, Allura’s finished her drink, smile as bright as ever. “So why’d you want to talk?” He asks, putting his hands under his chin. “I doubt you just wanted to hang out.”

“It’s about Allura,” Alfor responds. “I’m concerned about a few of her teachers and how her education’s doing in general.”

Coran’s job is working as a TA to one of the teachers at Allura’s high school, so it’s not a shocker that Alfor uses him to check up on her and her progress. The teachers in question were most probably Mrs Jones and Mr Marsh, Pre Calculus and AP English respectively. They caused a lot of problems for Allura from giving her way too much homework for her to handle making her sleep schedule a mess to purposely making her fail tests from not teaching the subjects in said tests.

“Mrs Jones and Mr Marsh right?” Alfor nods and Allura groans.

“I hate them. Mrs Jones seems to hate my guts and Mr Marsh never teaches anything properly. I once saw him drinking during school hours.” She throws her hands up. “He even had a class to teach right afterwards!” One of her friends turns around and pats her back. She sighs. “Thanks, Hunk. I’m just stressed.”

“I’ve talked to the principal and I’ve managed to talk to both of them. The principal said that while Mr Marsh was a problem and that she’ll figure out a way to remove him from the staff, she says Mrs Jones is a ‘perfect angel!’...” He puts air quotes around perfect angel - he’s met the bad side of this woman so many times that he’s certain she doesn’t have a good side. She may be good looking to some, but she’s a real bitch. 

“That’s bullshit.” Allura comments. Alfor groans. 

“Did you tell her all the things she’s done?” Coran nods.

“Brought the evidence of failing tests on purpose with the answer key and showed the ridiculous amount of homework she sets for each student. I even showed her that there was no way for a student to complete the homework and be able to get 8 hours of sleep!” Coran sighs. “But she says that if Mrs Jones wants to be stricter than other teachers than Allura needs to stop complaining. And she also said that if the students work hard enough then they should be able to complete the homework on time!” He puts his head in his hands. “She’s got to get her head straight and see that if this continues these kids are going to turn to drugs or something.”

Allura chimes in. “I saw Marvin smoking weed last week and plenty of kids with cigarettes.”

In his own experience teaching, he’s seen more than a few kids in the classes he’s overseen with cigarettes as well as one kid sneaking alcohol. It’s not just with Mrs Jones and Mr Marsh, he’s seen it with at least a few other teachers. At least the one he’s the TA for has her shit together. Alfor seems to be taking it all in, his frown getting deeper and deeper.

“As soon as I can, I’m going in to talk to that principal, this has gone too far. I care about my daughter’s health, safety and education and that woman is affecting every single one of them.” He stops. “I congratulate her for dealing with Mr Marsh but she’s turning a blind eye to another teacher who’s doing something that also deserves punishment!” 

“I think she’s just prejudiced against women,” Allura says. “Girl power for the win and all, but Mrs Jones is fucking Satan. She’s got to take off her glasses and see what’s inside each person.”

Alfor doesn’t even chastise her for the language like he normally does.

The three of them sit in silence - or as much silence as possible in the noisy café. He can clearly hear Allura’s friends arguing over the best drink, the best musical of the year and the best breed of dog. He can hear the bustling sounds of the café workers mixing and making drinks and food for the steady stream of customers. He can even hear the nearest people a few tables over talking about which drinks they want. They can’t hear each others breathing, but they can see the others eye movements and the awkwardness of the silence.

It’s only truly interrupted when Allura stands up from her seat and pulls her phone out from her jacket. 

“I think we need some fresh air.” She states, grabbing her bag. “Or just need a break from this conversation. Blow off some steam. We can’t just curse off Mrs Jones - as much as I know we all want to.” She pauses. “Well, you guys can carry on. I’m just not gonna be there.”

With that, she gets up from her seat and walks briefly to her friends, before they all walk outside. Alfor and Coran quickly exchange glances. 

“Well, I guess we do need a break.” Alfor shrugs, before getting up and holding one of the doors open for him. Coran opens the other and the two of them walk outside. It’s a sunny day outside, but the mood feels anything but joyful. Allura’s leaning against the wall, mouth moving at a mile a minute amongst her friends. Her facial expression looks none better than what she was inside and her friends seem to be only fueling her anger. 

Alfor sighs and starts to walk towards her before Coran grabs his arm and starts to walk towards one of the chairs and table situated outside. “Nope, don’t you dare. Leave her be.” Coran drags him away and plonks him down on a chair. “You need to let off some steam.”

“I am fully prepared to throttle that principal, Coran. You don’t understand.” Coran shakes his head.

“No, you’re the one who doesn’t understand. I’ve worked with that woman for the past 2 and a half years. This isn’t the first time she’s done something like this and I doubt it’s the last.” He sighs. “Let’s both calm down, though. We need a coherent plan that isn't killing the principal and getting away with it.”

No one laughs. It’s silence again as they watch the road nearby. The rush hour is ongoing as the cars speed on by on a rush to get home. A few times the cars stop and enter the café or one of the shops on the opposite side. The endless honking and cursing from the drivers' are eventually enough to force Alfor onto his phone but Coran just sits there. It’s sort of relaxing in a way. Then something catches his eye.

A small black cat makes its way onto the road. Coran recognises the kitten and immediately jumps out of his seat and lurches towards it to try and grab it back. Someone grabs the back of his jacket to pull him back and he watches as the cat safely makes it across, mewling softly at him. 

“You should know by now that cats are smart by now, Coran. You shouldn’t worry as much.” 

Alfor remarks, slowly letting go of his jacket. Coran huffs slightly but relaxes a little. The cat would’ve been fine even if he had reached out.

“How’d you know I was being reckless anyway?” He asks.

“I saw the cat and kinda knew what you were going to do next. The cat’s going to be fine 99% of the time.” Alfor’s calm voice nearly convinces him. Emphasis on nearly.

“And the other 1% of the time Mittens gets run over.” Alfor punches Coran’s shoulder lightly, with a chuckle.

“You’ve got to cut out on that dark humour, man.” The two of them walk back to their chairs and start up another conversation. It’s when Allura comes up to them, with her phone blazing the time 8:12 PM in their faces when they realise how much time has slipped away from them.

“Come on you two. It’s 8, I’ve gotta get these guys home.” She gestures back to her friends. “Their parents will kill me if I don’t get them home soon. Last time Mrs Holt nearly throttled me.” before snapping her head back fully. “Wait, Keith, Lance this isn’t the time!”

The two of them look at the scene before them. One of the boys has thrown a punch at the other and it seems the two are fully prepared to duke it out. Alfor sighs and walks over to them and tries to pull them apart. The two just start all over again. Punching and screaming at each other. It’s so exaggerated yet brutally real that you’d have to be blind to think that the two were faking it. Alfor is kicked in the face before Allura manages to pull the two apart.

“Why the fuck are you two fighting again?” She demands, hands on her hips. “It’s 8 PM, get your shit together!” 

“Keith started it!” Allura slaps him across the face.

“Like hell he did Lance! You’re always provoking him, prodding him and generally being a nuisance. Why can’t you two just grow the fuck up!” Both Keith and Lance have backed down away from her. No one messed with Allura. 

Alfor stands to the side shaking his head. “Allura, language. But I have to agree. You two should know better than this. Stop acting like you’re 6 years old.

Allura smirks slightly. “You know what we should make them do? We sh-” She pauses. Then she screams. It causes the others to turn around and they all gasp at the sight. Hunk plain out vomits and Allura feels sick to her bones.

The road seems to have glitched apart with one part of a car sticking through the road and another split right open. Even the pavement seems to have faded and small bits of it have uprooted themselves or just disappeared. It resembles an old video game in a way, except in reality. Allura reaches forward to try and touch it before her dad pulls her back.

“Don’t touch it! Who knows what could be in it.” He pulls out his phone. “I’m calling 911, some of those drivers need to be rescued as soon as possible-” Allura pulls herself out of his mindless rambling and looks back at the scene. She narrows her eyes as she spots a small piece of paper, torn from a notebook. Scribbled on it is - Do you remember the way to Paradise?” 

Allura lifts her head from the paper and stares into the middle of it all. A black entity stares back at her, trying to speak before glitching away completely. She pays little attention to it as she sees a small black kitten mewling softly at her. 

**“Do you want to achieve Paradise?”** It says between meows. **“I can lead the way, young one.”**

As Allura runs away from the scene screaming to high heaven, the glitched mess seems to fall apart. The road returns to normal and the cars whizz on by like normal. The kitten stays there. The cars run it over several times, but it isn’t harmed. Like it isn’t even there at all.

**“You’re far to gone.”** It calls. **“Your time is up.”**


	2. Cat

Coran was lost. 

A fair amount of time ago, he had spotted a small black cat sat in the middle of the road. Rolling around on it’s back, it seemed blissfully unaware of the danger that it was in. So he’d decided to do the right thing and get the cat out of harm's way. And what a horrible decision that had turned out to be. 

The world split apart in a split second and he disappeared. The cat watched him disappear and the surrounding destruction and confusion with a smile. 

Then the destruction seemed to pause like someone had just pressed a button on a remote control. He saw a car being half glitched out and the ground beneath him all messed up and cracked. He resisted the urge to scream barely. It looked so wrong so very wrong. 

Nothing moved. 

No one blinked. 

No one breathed. 

He looked towards where the pavement surrounding the coffee shop was and saw distorted faces where his friend and company once stood. It was terrifying and at that moment he screamed. He yelled. All his years of learning how the world worked were flipped on their head as he watched the world around him glitch and distort.

**“It’s weird isn’t it?”** A voice calls to him. He turns around to see a black cat mindlessly licking its paw. The cat opened its eyes and he saw human eyes flash there for a second before normal cat eyes took their place. 

He rubbed his temples and groaned. Oh, this would be much easier to explain away if there was a reason. Drugs (The last time he’d had any was way back when he was a bandit. Never again.), Hallucinations (As far as he knew, this was real) anything of the sort to explain what on earth was happening?

**“You’re confused.”** The cat walks closer to him. It blinks and its nose is replaced for a millisecond with a birds beak. **“Scared, worried.”** The cat seems to smile. It’s up close now, it’s tail stroking his legs. He shivers. **“There’s nothing to fear, human.”**

“I’m pretty sure there’s plenty of things to fear.” He states, kneeling down so he’s eye level with it. “For starters, cats can’t talk.” The cat’s mouth is replaced at that moment with a pair of human lips. He screams in response and backs against until his butt hits the pavement and his body contorts until his head faces Alfor’s feet. He gets up and looks at what used to be his friend. No eyes, no nose, no mouth. Just a glitchy mess where his face used to be. Coran saw that his body language was tense. He didn’t want to know why. 

When he looked back at the cat, the lips were gone. 

It seemed to be amused. Coran stood up and walked forward to glare down at the cat. He didn’t want to be under whatever that thing was. **“I have something you want, human.” The cat pauses. “Or rather something you need.”**

As far as he knows he doesn’t need much. Food, water, a roof over his head and oxygen. Maybe the occasional support from his colleagues and the once in a blue moon respect but not really necessary. “I’m certain I won’t need it.”

The moment the words leave his mouth he sees the cat’s legs stretch impossibly high to stare right at him. **“And I’m certain you will.”** Coran stumbles back slightly and falls at the feet of Alfor. **“Humans are such pitiful creatures.”** The cat’s paws suddenly become elongated into a scary imitation of human hands and both tightly grasp his face. He feels sharp claws enter his cheeks and bites his lip to avoid crying out in pain. The cat's eyes are human like again but with no pupils, leaving a stark white. “ **Coran Smythe.”** The cat laughs. **“Human names are so weird. You’d be the laughing stock up There - but I guess you are down here?”** The cat's words seem to try and want to strike a nerve but he barely feels the sting.Kids made fun of his weird name ages ago but now people barely comment on it. But is another word that takes his interest.

“There?” He asks. It's vague and is certainly not the name of a real place. That'd just be really stupid. The cat's claws extract from his cheeks and he lets out a sigh of relief. The cat places the now smaller paw on it’s chin. 

**“There is a special place.”** It looks straight at him. **“Paradise if you could even call it that.”** The cat’s face morphs repeatedly into different human faces, - female, male, white, black, asian - and speaks with many lips. **“You will be truly happy there for the first time in your life. Free from your stress and responsibilities. Free from the chains life has placed upon you.”** Coran shakes his head. 

“I don’t need it. I’m happy with my life as it is.” The faces pause. The cat stares at him, the eyes still ever-changing like a kaleidoscope of rainbows. The paws morph back into claws and stab into his cheeks, making him yelp out in the suddenness of the pain. The mouth snarls into a frown.

**"And I don't care."** The voice changes once more, becoming more demanding and insistent.  Then the claws in his cheek started to seemingly blow away like they were made of dust. The faces seemed to be as baffled as him as each bit of their body seemed to fly away like dust. Bit by bit each bit flew away from the body. It was like the cat was melting in a strange way. **“What is this?”** It screams holding a hand up as that to floats away in the wind. It was horrifying in every sense of the word watching as even the veins and arteries got turned into dust. It was over quickly and all the dust of what used to be alive seemingly never even existed. He sat in confusion on the pavement before realising that the same thing seemed to be happening to him. 

His skin was coming off like flakes of sand and he could see so many different colours of him float away. 

He screamed loudly and tried to claw at his face before realizing that it didn’t hurt. He couldn’t feel a thing as even his eyeballs started to float away as dust. For the first time in years, he felt truly scared. The scene before his eyes was horrifying and seemed to belong in a horror film. Was he in one? He couldn’t be - this was real life for fucks sake! 

The process seemed to last forever and it was even worse when his eyes had deteriorated completely leaving him blind to what horrors were happening back with his body. He was in the dark. 

Then he opened his eyes and saw that he was fine. He blinked a couple of times and realised that the world had turned back to normal. No weird cats. No glitches or anything. No dust. Just reality, the way it should be. He looks around and sees no one around. It’s pitch black around him and the street lamps paint the scene in such an unceasing way that he wants to get out as soon as he can. He sighs and gets to his feet. 

“Well, at least I can walk.” He mumbles to himself as he starts to walk home, plucking his phone out of his bag along the way.


	3. Drank

From the moment his phone blinks on, Coran blurrily stared at the time on his phone. He shakes his head and blinks a couple thousand times in complete and utter confusion. 11:53 PM. The last time he checked the time it was 8. That was around 3 hours stuck in whatever that place had been. He shudders at the thought. Thank god he doesn’t have any cats. He never wants to see another cat again in his entire life.

Thankfully his apartment isn’t that far from the cafe and he gets home with only a few difficulties along the way. The number of times he'd accidentally walked into a streetlamp or into the road were a lot larger then he would’ve hoped due to the dizziness and general misplacement of his train of thought. His brain still feels as woozy when he’s walking up the stairs to his small flat and unlocking his door.

His apartment is in simple words a mess. Unmarked and marked test papers are stacked in two piles on his desk and he sighs when he sees how much higher the unmarked is compared to the marked.

“At least it’s only half of the tests for me to mark...” He mumbles to himself as he glares over what his desk has become -his pens lay in a mess between the papers, sticky notes lay sporadically with his incoherent ramblings and his desk lamp on its side facing the door. With a sigh, he walks over and picks it up, putting it upright. At least he didn’t leave it on this time.

He sits down on his bed and stares at the ceiling. It’s bland and white with nothing really to pick out and talk about. Almost like a sea of nothing but... With a swift movement, he fishes his pillow out from under his head and shoves it over his eyes. He doesn’t want to see a sea of anything right now.

It takes a moment or so to realise his breath has gone shaky. In all honesty, he’s scared. This shouldn’t be possible. He shouldn’t be getting scared of his ceiling. He shouldn’t be letting the cat terrorise him.

After a few deep breaths he sits up and places the pillow back, leaning against the wall, phone still in hand. He turns it on, letting the small source of light distract him from himself.

* * *

 

It’s the next day now, a good half an hour in and he stares at the screen. Not at the time, not at his background not at anything else but his recent history.

He has at least 7 missed calls and nearly 60  unread text messages from Alfor alone and Allura’s are close. Her frantic texts going from sporadic to rapid in a matter of hours. Even a few of her friends pop up from time to time.

All of them ask him where he’s been.

Allura’s texts go from just asking where he’s gone to texts yelling for where he is to quickly typed out written screams asking where he is and how did he disappear so quickly. Her usual capital letters, proper grammar and punctuation quickly descends into texts that didn’t even see a second glance. Eventually, he can’t even understand what she’s typed out but the rest of the messages weave out a general message - where are you?

Some of her messages however just try and tell him something that right after he’s read it all disappears before he can comprehend what it was. Out of what he did manage to read, she’s telling him about a glitch in the road? None of her other messages mentions anything as strange as that but it gets his nerves up. Does something not want him to see this cryptid messages? Should he contact phone support and ask what’s up? Or is he just too delirious? With a glance at the time, he can see it’s likely to be the last one.

When he glances back at his phone, his eyes shrink away from the light. It’s too blinding in the darkness but when it faded he feels open. The darkness seems to watch him as he falls into a fit of sleep as his phone buzzes one last time.


	4. Poison

His dreams aren’t any better. Well, ‘dreams’ doesn’t exactly fit it. He’s in that white space again and a cat stares him down from the other side of a floating bag. It’s bloated with something inside.

The cat seems to watch him impatiently, waiting for him to do something. If the room even had air, it would’ve been tense. Eventually, the cat leaps onto the bag and jumps inside. He watches still. He hears it rustle around inside, not looking for anything but things to make noise. Things to make him suspicious or even want to open the bag. He doesn’t want to.

Eventually, the cat leaps back out and stares. “Well?” It asks him, tilting its head. “What’cha think?” 

What does he think? Oh, he’ll show that cat. And he turns around and starts to walk away, further into the blank void. Nothing ahead, everything behind

Coran doesn’t get very far before he sees the cat and the stuffed bag again. He walks off again and the cat and that bag follow. No matter where he tries to go, the cat follows him. Eventually, he groans and lies on the floor, closing his eyes. He’s sick and tired of this bullshit. He slept for a reason and this wasn’t what he wanted to get out of a rest. His feet have lost all feeling from the initial walk back home and now all this walking around this stupid void. The sudden thump on his chest tells him that it’s on him. His chest tightens. 

Claws puncture his shirt and his breaths as silently as he can while the cat plays with his chest using its claws. Sticking them in certain bits of flesh and pulling them out elsewhere. It seems to be mesmerizing to the cat but to Coran all he can do is lay there silently. He could speak. But his mouth stays shut. Nothing hurts but the ever building fear deep inside. He’s scared out of his mind - so very scared out of his mind. The cat’s claws still hurt but his mind drifts elsewhere.

Questions fill his mind and seem to imprint themselves in front of his mind, writing down his anxieties and fears in permanent ink, rolling inky letters filled with prophecies for the future. The letters build up higher and higher in his mind until he feels ready to explode. He feels the cat's claws scraping lightly against his cheek. The pain is comforting and stings. Then it starts to play with his head, sticking its claws in his temples, forehead, ears and even the back of his head. Every claw multiplies his worries and fears and the sharpies his demons use to write become more bright, entrancing and even more. If only he could close his eyes to his mind. He doesn’t want to see anything. Then the letters spill out of his head and into the void. The inky letters splatter onto the floor and endless messages are written on the floor around him brightly and he closes his eyes even tighter. Is the cat pulling stuff out of his own mind? 

“Your thoughts are strange.” The cat remarks, pulling its claws out. His eyes open for a split second and he sees it all. The messages his mind created and pulled together of his anxiety, fears and everything else he had felt during the last hours. Every letter he read he had thought. Every word he had conjured. Every sentence he had strung together. Overall, he had created a masterpiece of his own mind. All extracted out. He could still think those same words but they felt different projected on the outside.

He didn’t want the cat's claws in his head again. Never, ever again. The cat chuckled. 

“I’ll always have strings strung in your mind.”

“Strings can always be cut.” He responds, pulling himself to his knees shakily. The cat falls onto the floor in a crash and stares at him. He glares back. “Besides, you’ve known me for less than a day, let alone 5 hours.” With a deep breath, he stares down the cat and nearly shouts at it, “ What can you do to me?” 

The cat’s nowhere to be seen. He looks but it’s gone. Vanished. He walks around the area where it last sat for what feels like an eternity but it’s completely gone. As if it never existed in the first place. As if he’s always been here on his own. Alone.

So he glares into the void, driving all his pent anger and frustration into staring at nothing. There’s nothing where his eyes lay or where they don’t. All around him is void, things that shouldn't even exist. But they do. He can’t hear anything but the sound of his voice or his breathing. Each time he stops yelling he can hear his breathing like a needle dropping in a silent room. This shouldn’t be real. This can’t be real. Maybe this is one big hallucination. Yet, he carries on screaming as the one thing he can do but think. Thinkings dangerous. He’ll wander into a strange place into his thoughts and it’ll happen again. He needs to distract himself whatever way he can. So he screams about anything and everything to a silent audience. And he waits and waits for an applause, for a reaction for anything to happen but his endless ranting. 

He waits as long as he can. His patience is quickly whittled down and eventually, he just takes to lying on the void’s floor and glaring and yelling that way. Eventually, he passes out. Somehow. Sometime. How many words had he gotten out by that point? Too many to be forgotten. Too little to leave a mark.

interrupted by the sound of newly sewn strings interlocking new memories with old and even newly conjured memories. The cat steps back from its handiwork and smiles. Coran doesn’t.


	5. And

He woke up rapidly and sweating - terrified to go back to sleep. His curtains were shut tightly but he could still see peaks of nighttime from outside. He hadn’t even been asleep for that long. Not even 5 hours. It had felt much longer than 5 hours, but that was typical for dreams. Or was it really? He sits up in his bed and leans against the wall. Coffee might help a little bit. With a sigh, he gets out of bed and stumbles the way to the kitchen. It’s not as much as a mess as the rest of the house but still not much better. He should clean it up sometime. When he has the time that is. At least the chairs are still upright. That’s one less thing to worry about.

He clears up the area around the coffee maker for a few minutes before deciding that he finally has enough space. A good few times he feels ready to collapse on the counter and he has no clue how he’s still up and going. Eventually, the coffee machine gets started. And his black coffee starts to pour out. 

It doesn’t pour out into a cup. It drips out onto the bottom and eventually over the sides and onto the countertop. When the coffee stops coming out of the machine, some of it is dangerously close to the edge. Some drops slowly drop onto the floor and near the feet of a collapsed man. He doesn’t twitch at the boiling coffee. He doesn’t stir. He’s knocked out cold.

This is definitely the deciding factor in cleaning up his kitchen, he decides to himself when he wakes up back in that white void. He sits up and takes a look around. Still the same boring sterile white endless void. Nothing or no one for miles around him except for him. Again. Maybe forever. Is he stuck here? He takes another step and stands up. All feelings of drowsiness and sleep are gone leaving him wide awake and terrified.

“What the fuck do you want from me?” He yells into the void. “I know you want something! So tell me! Or better yet leave me alone!”  It’s quiet and his words don’t exactly echo across the nonexistent walls but his message is out. It heard. It appears a few feet away hovering above the ground.

 **“Welcome back.”** It taunts at him. **“Have you decided to play nice?”** Coran states at the cat in silence. What does it mean by play nice? At that, the cat leaps up into the air and near his feet. **“Want to follow my rules this time?”** It asks, rubbing itself against his legs. He kicks the cat away and starts to walk off.

“I’m not following your rules.” He states, his layers of confidence masking his anxiety like many layers protect the skin from the harsh cold on a winter's day. But sometimes layers don’t stick. Sometimes layers won’t save you. From the way the cat seems to be staring at his back, he can almost feel his confidence rolling off him and revealing his inner weaknesses. He shudders at the thought. This was getting too dark to fast. All in one day. And the cat seems to be amused. It leaps into the air again and lands in front of him, floating right in front of his face.

 **“You’re in my world though.”** Of course, the cat had made this hell space. **“I make the rules here.”** The cat rubs it’s two front paws together and the world around them changes. It’s a scene that seems familiar but not too familiar but at the same time not too unfamiliar. His brain swarms. It’s a scene depicting the outside of the cafe, facing it from the opposite side of the road nearby. On the other side, he sees the panicked faces of Alfor and Allura again. The road around him is a glitchy mess, seeming as if to be in the middle of falling apart. The void seems to stick up in icicles of doom and cars jutting out at odd angles with the people inside at even weirder ones - bones jutting out at strange angles, mouths contorted in endless screams of agony and faces jumbled up and placed back on haphazardly with mouths as eyes and noses as ears. He resists the urge to throw up.

“Why are you showing me this?” He asks. “I’ve already seen it once...” His voice wavers near the end. He may have seen this scene before but this feels like he’s removed his rose-tinted glasses. He’s wiped them clean and seen the world in a whole new view. A whole new horrifyingly real view.

 **“Do you like it?”** The cat asks in a sing-song voice, walking over to one of the nearby cars. Inside is a screaming woman who had her eyes morphed together, a pink-grey goop spilling out her ears and one of her arms thrown through the window and bent at an awful angle in a sloppy L shape. The bone sticks out at her elbow at such an angle that if the woman wasn’t dead the pain would’ve been unbearable. The cat perches on her arm as if it was a chair and not a real human being's arm. It talks to him as it licks itself clean. **“You were screaming about the white space so much I thought you would appreciate the change in environment.”** It waits patiently for an answer Coran isn’t willing to give. **“Not gonna answer? Oh well. We could chat all day and not much time would go by.”**

He sighs and looks away from the satan spawn of a pet. Of course, time would flow differently here. Isn’t that how it always works. Oh, how he would wish to be marking test papers right now. Or anything else. Anything better than this.

 **“You miss them don’t you?”** The cat doesn’t miss a beat. Coran does and his moment of silence at the cat's words set the small thing off. **“Well of course you do. Even though you really only care about one. The rest came as a package deal for you.”** As it talks it curls itself around Alfor’s legs and yawns. **“Or maybe you never even wanted the rest in the first place? They mean nothing to you. Barely a blip on your radar. You don’t even know their names.”**

His blood runs cold. The words hurt and sting as if pulling a knife in and out of an open wound. He cares about Allura as if she were family. He’s known her for so long that he knows a lot about the girl. She’s been interested in fantasy novels ever since she was a kid. In fact, she still has a lot of fantasy merch from when she was younger. She absolutely hates chai lattes but her friends love them. She’s only well behaved in class and any other time she’s likely to be sticking forks into the ceiling... And that’s only a few of the things he knows. He may not know her friends very well but they make her happy. They may be strangers but they’re good people. He could tell the cat all this but he opts for just two words.

“Shut up.” He stalks over to the cat and glares down at it. “You know Allura’s friends even less than I.”

 **“Do I know?”** The cat questions. It crawls up and over Allura and leaps onto one of her friend's heads. It pulls it’s paws up and prepares to stick its claws inside when a scream erupts from his throat. The cat pauses for a moment. _**“Oh.”**_ Its face turns to him and it puts a paw on its chin. _**“What, do you suddenly care for someone who isn’t you?”**_

“Stop assuming things about me! I wouldn’t do this!” He yells, slightly too loudly. His hands had flown up to his mouth when the scream had come out but now he feels like ripping it out completely. The cat would only twist his words further to fulfil its own twisted goals. With a laugh, the cat sticks its claws in.

**“Of course you would.”**

The claws pierce through the hair and the skin in such a morbid fashion. He can’t see the wound from the distance he’s at but from the way the cat seems to be pulling the skin apart and pulling veins, arteries and even bits of brain, the skin seems to be nothing more than paper in comparison to the cat's claws. It’s over so fast he barely even saw it. But the aftermath is worse. Instead of blood coming pouring down the teens face what looks like ink comes pouring out of the wound. It stains their hair black, drips down the face and starts to pour into the floor writing letters on the pavement in a sloppy and uneven fashion with enough blood to write a million essays for years.

The inky blood writes out many things. Basic things like a name, age, blood type but as more letters come out the more personal things creep out as well. Hidden personality traits, secrets, interests and even a detailed history. Some of the things he reads he never would’ve guessed about the kid. The kids in some of the classes he teaches and what he reads makes him want to scream. Depression and anxiety hidden behind a thousand walls all broken down and written for all eyes to see. The letters start to fill the entire pavement, the road and beyond. The world is the letters paper and he can see it stretch into the distance. He hesitates to move from the words encircling his feet. It’s terrifying. The kid's face hasn’t changed but the cat seems pleased. It takes ages for him to break out of his surprised trance and even longer for him to speak without stumbling on his words.

“You’re a monster.” He whispers. “Do you think this is funny?”

 **“Hilarious.”** The cat leaps off and starts to saunter over to him. It’s feet mess up the words it steps on, staining its paws with the ink. A smile forms on its face and feels more sinister than anything the cat might’ve aimed for. **“Do you want to know what I want?”** It asks when it’s nearly up in his face. It sits down and looks up at him, expectantly. It barely waits for a second for him to answer before continuing. **“I want to help you.”**

“Good to know you’re awful at your job.” He’s surprised that he can still joke at a time like this but he doesn’t regret it. If the cat wanted to help him then it’s on the entirely wrong track. In Fact, it’s actually been a hindrance to him! The cat doesn’t seem amused or angry. It just wipes the ink around it playfully. As if waiting for something.

 **“You’re just slow.”** It takes a moment before the cat realises that he has no clue as to what it’s talking about. **“I’ve been helping you towards the greater good. To paradise.”** Oh. So this cat is quite alike those Mormons ringing the doorbell and saying you’ll go to hell if you don’t worship this deity! He’s never really believed in this sort of stuff but this approach is just really shitty.

“I’m an atheist.” He says, folding his arms. “I don’t believe in god, paradise or anything like it.”

**“This has nothing to do with theism.”**

“Bullshit.” The cat's eyes narrow and glare at him. Coran steps back.

 **“I’m being serious - maybe you should too. Paradise has nothing to do with anything theists will try and get you to believe in. However, the journey you take to get there is quite like how they believe.”** At this point, Coran has taken quite a few steps away. He’s a moment away from running away as far as possible when in a blink of an eye he’s back where he started. The cat doesn’t move. _**“I’m talking to you.”**_

The moment is tense and silent - at least on one end. The cat couldn’t be at more ease in contrast to the fear Coran feels at the moment. All he wants is to disappear and forget the events of the past two days. Maybe the entire week. Start anew. A new sheet of paper. But he knows that this story was written in permanent marker and no matter what he does he can’t erase what’s been written.

It only takes a few minutes of silence for the cat to start again.

 **“You’ve encountered many religious fanatics in your lifetime, haven’t you? A Christian or two come up and explain what you need for a stairway straight to heaven. Well, consider me the religious fanatic here. Except my goal is to get you on the right path instead of pulling you into a religion dedicated to doing good by a fake god.”** The amount of bullshit coming from the cat is ironic. He’s tempted to walk away again but something tells him that if he tries he’ll be brought back again. He has to listen. But the words the cat strings together are awful. Especially when it talks about Christianity because may not have ever paid attention in regards to it but the cat's words scream lies - all of it.  Regardless of what the cat's feelings for Christianity are, it reeks of radicalisation and he’s interested to know and understand more.

“What do you mean by fake god? Why are you shitting on Christianity in particular?”

The cat doesn’t seem to notice he asked a question and carries on as if he never said anything. **“Paradise has very strict rules on who can get in and who can’t but if anyone puts their mind to it they can do it. The path may involve some tricky things for some but it is achievable. Sacrifices have to be made and anything that is sacrificed can’t come back.”**

“Tricky things like murder?” He asks tentatively. Hopefully not, he’s not exactly ready to be pushed to murder someone by a creepy cat.

 **“Murders not technically on the list. All depends on your definition of the word.”** Coran narrows his eyes. Okay, murder is probably involved. And if it isn’t then this cat just likes to be cryptic like telling everyone that they’re going to survive on a quiz show dedicated to suffering.

“Murder is murder, no matter what you do to the word. Am I or is anyone else going to die?” He asks instead but the cat refuses to answer it as well.

 **“We’re getting off track, mortal. You’ll have to do things you most likely have never done before or would regret. But they are necessary sacrifices you’ll have to make. Otherwise, you’ll rot in hell until your soul deteriorates and you are forgotten by everyone.”** The face Coran makes seems to please the cat. **“No need to worry about that of course. I trust you’ll give in to what you have to do. Think of it as a game.”**

“The blue whale game?” He asks, raising an eyebrow. It sure sounds similar to it and if it is, well he doesn’t exactly want to die. He’s got plans for when he wants to die and it doesn’t involve working with teenagers in a crummy apartment. At his words, the cat laughs.

 **“You’re on the right lines but not quite. This will take you a few days to complete and if you do then you won’t commit suicide! Or at least I won’t force you to.”** Good _lord_ **. “The tasks are just simple things I want you to do.”**

“Do any of them involve murder?” The cat sighs.

**“No. Stop asking.”**

“You seem like someone who would want me to murder a ton of people.” He comments. “That’s your vibe. You’re a kinda _stabby cat._ ” Sometimes, he wonders if his snarkiness is what will bring him down but today is not that day. Maybe he’ll just be as annoying when he dies - hopefully in a good decade or so.

 **“If you don’t shut up I’ll tell you to kill Alfor right now right this second. Or better yet, Allura.”** His face goes pale and his whole body freezes. The events the cat describes seem worse than death. So he shuts up. **“ _Good_. I’ve got 7 tasks I wish for you to complete. Each task for each day. By the end of the weak, you’ll ascend and I will be out of your way forever.”**

He’s tempted to ask if the cat means he’ll die at the end of the week but figures that it’d be better if he doesn’t say anything. Might as well comply and do the task to get the McGuffin. Then the cat stabs into Alluras leg with a single claw and pulls out a rolled up scroll from the wound, stained with a fair amount of inky blood. He refrains the urge to throw up at the sight. The cat hands the scroll to him and gestures to him to open it. He opens the scroll out fully and sees the contents.

It’s written in the same sloppy handwriting as the letters on the floor around him and it numbers down a list from 1 to 7. Only the first one has something written next to it and it simply says, “ _Keep everyone safe and secure. If anyone dies under your protection then all is void and the cycle repeats.”_ He looks up from the scroll with one question in mind. Or many at once with one prevailing main question.

“What the fuck.” He states, gesturing one hand to the scroll and pointing the other at the cat. The cat shrugs at him.

 **“It gives you instructions as clear as day. Follow them.”** And with that last cryptic message, the cat fades away into dust. The world around him crumbles and he falls to the ground.


	6. The

He wakes up on the kitchen floor, safe and sound on the outside but not all good up there. A smashed mug lays next to him and a puddle of cold coffee near his feet. He slowly gets up and off his feet. His head hurts but he’s good enough to stand up - albeit with some support from the countertop and he takes a glance at the time and he groans. His eyesight is horrible and the numbers blur together but he gets a good enough idea of the time - it’s 7. What day is it? He can’t remember. Most likely a work day. Either way, it’d probably be best to get his phone. Which he left upstairs. Either a blessing or a curse considering that he had no opportunity to accidentally drop it but now he has to walk up stairs drowsy.

In all honesty, he’s been through worse. It takes a lot of stumbling and leaning against the wall but he manages it. He checks the time and day and of course - it’s Tuesday. He’s got around 2 hours to get his shit together and drive.

But there are quite a few more messages he needs to get to. In all honesty, he might’ve had a clearer mind 6 hours earlier than now but better late than never. He starts with the missed calls as he gets dressed. He’ll deal with the mess downstairs later. He clicks on the first one and starts to rummage through his sock drawer.

Alfor doesn’t start talking immediately but starts with a sigh. He feels the urge to stop listening - to listen to anything else but he stops himself. It’s his friend - it can’t be that awkward.

 _“Hey man. I was hesitating on calling you because today’s been weird. Way too weird to summarise in a phone call.”_ Coran groans in irritation. At least he’s not the only one having weird shit happen to him. _“But you disappeared out of nowhere and we’re kinda worried about you. So call me back?”_ It ends there, being a lot shorter than he expected. He grabs a pair of plain socks and starts to put them on as the second one starts. _“I’ve taken Allura home and her friends have gone home as well. I checked your apartment and you aren’t there. I’m starting to worry, you’ve been missing for an hour with no clues to where you went. Allura said she saw-_ ” The call starts to glitch out and he nearly drops the phone in surprise. It’s loud and intrusive but a few words slip out before the glitching starts back up again. It reminds him of the messages and he starts to wonder if something is wrong with his phone. Or they’re trying to tell him something he’s not allowed to hear. Which is really strange. The static ends after a minute or so and the message ends with, _“Please, call back my dude. Please don’t be dead._ ” The last part is whispered but he hears it all the same.

“Did I _die_?” He whispers to himself as he clicks on the next one, picking out a shirt from the closet. He’s not at all focused, all his attention focused on the screen.

 _“I’m this close to filling a missing person report but I know that’s silly.”_ Alfor whispers. _“It’s extremely silly. You’ll turn up eventually. Maybe. Your phones turned off maybe. You can’t just not be answering it. Or you aren’t even there._ ” The pause after that gives him time to quickly snatch a shirt and jeans. He needs to do something other than stare blankly at the back of his closet. Focus on his feet, focus on the carpet, focus on anything else. “ _Answer to at least one of these. I want to know you’re still there. I don’t want my best friend to be dead, missing or worse. If this is a joke then… it’s not funny._ ” It takes a few moments of silence before the message ends and he hesitates on clicking on the next one. It’s 3 out of 7 messages and Alfor already sounds desperate. Who knows what lies in the next few? Should he skip ahead? He looks down at the timestamps between the messages. The first few had an hour than half an hours difference. The later ones all had around an hours difference from the one before - apart from the last one. It was around 15 minutes after the 6th message. A final message before he gives up - assuming his best friend’s dead? Or another quick message not giving up hope still? He hopes for the best and dreads the worse as he clicks on it.

It starts off immediately, Alfor’s worried voice coming in at full blast. “A _lright, at this point I’m certain you haven’t got your phone on you. It’s nearly midnight and you haven’t answered any of my calls or messages. Allura says she hasn’t got any luck either and at this point, I’m certain no further calls or messages will get through to you. When you do get this message, please just do anything to let us know you’re alive. And since I don’t know whether or not you skipped my calls take into account that-_ ” The rest of the message fills with static again. Alfor is definitely trying to tell him something that his phone can’t process or something is blocking it from getting to him. But what is Alfor trying to tell him?

He’s still pondering the question when he’s driving to the school and when he’s setting up for the day. What has his best friend been trying to tell him that he can’t be allowed to know? It could be literally anything.

There’s a knock on his door then another. Then another and soon someone is rapidly hammering on his door. He gets up from his chair and opens the door. Outside is Mrs Jones, with her arms crossed. He looks behind her and sees the principal, slightly exasperated. Oh, she had to pull this again, didn’t she?

“What is it, Patrice.” He sighs, leaning against the doorframe, using Mrs Jones first name to slightly irritate her, It works.

“This is a work environment, call me Mrs Jones, Mr Smythe.” She snaps at him. He rolls his eyes in response. Course not. It’s a Tuesday and he’d rather not deal with more than one piece of bullshit. “I’m here because of a student's claims against me spurred on by you and some of the other teacher's complaints. You’ve got to be more mature than this.” He refrains the urge to close the door in her face but he’d rather avoid being fired.

“Alright. Why did you feel like bringing the principal here when she has better things to do?” Patrice turns around and smiles sweetly.

“To make sure you don’t do anything wrong and have to be fired. Now can we come in to talk?” He looks behind him at his desk - only slightly organised. The marked test papers sit in a folder with a bunch of other coloured folders lying in a heap as he looks for the lesson plans he needs.

“Give me a minute.” He closes the door as calmly as he can before moving the open folders to his side of the desk and pulling out two chairs - making sure that one of them is creaky and uneven. Patrice hates those chairs. The two walk in a second later and he groans when the principal sits down in the chair he intended for Patrice to sit in.

“I thought I told you to throw out the bad chairs.” Coran shrugs and gets a replacement chair (He’d rather not but a job is better than slightly petty revenge), before sitting down in his chair and folding his arms.

“So do you want to yell at me first or should I?” He asks plainly. Patrice sighs and places her hands on the table. Her smile looks kind but her eyes scream of anger. Good to know she came her calm and collected.

“We aren’t going to be yelling at one another like last time. It’s bad manners.” He remembers last time. It was just after he went up to the principal with all the evidence. She was absolutely livid at his claims and was yelling at the top of her lungs. He was also yelling - of course - even though she had started it. Either way, both had screamed themselves hoarse at each other before Patrice stormed out in a huff. Guess she liked to focus on what he’d done wrong instead of what she had. Typical Patrice.

“I guess you’d like to start.” He replies, more focused on the papers in front of him and all the small mistakes he made with his marking. It takes a few moments of silence before she starts up.

“You know Alice?”

“A couple few.” Alice is a common name, he teaches at least 5 in a day. It’s slightly confusing but it must be worse for them. It’d be impossible to tell who wanted which Alice.

“Alice DeSouza.” He remembers the girl briefly. She got kicked out and he barely remembers seeing her elsewhere.

“Briefly taught her before she got kicked out of the class. Why?” He already knows the reason the girl was brought up but might as well stroke Patrice’s huge ego.

“She was at the local cafe yesterday - Citron something or other. She overheard your conversation with a student.” Can’t even be bothered to remember the cafe’s name. And of course, Alice had overheard their conversation.

“Nosey.” He simply states. Patrice looks ready to throw her chair at him.

“The things she told me you said were derogatory and horrid! You called me a bitch! And the student called me Satan!” The principal looks shocked at the claim and looks at him horrified.

“Mr Smythe! Did you?” She exclaims. “Who was this student?” She turns to Patrice and asks. Patrice smiles her evil little smile.

“Alice didn’t say but I’m certain Mr Smythe can tell us. Can’t you?” Patrice seems pleased with herself and leans back in her chair.

“How much of our conversation did Alice hear by the way?” He asks. She takes a few moments to respond, most likely looking over her mental notes.

“Not all of it. She really only heard the things I’ve already said because you were yelling so loudly. However, she also says that you were saying many untrue things about my teaching abilities” He smiles.

“The student I was talking to is in your class. I’m not dragging her into this discussion but everything I said was true. You’ve failed tests on purpose for students you dislike. I compared a few tests and if a student you liked and a student you disliked had the same answer - you were likely to have failed the one you disliked. I didn’t say that then but Mrs Jones it’s true. You’re picking favourites and it isn’t fair for students who work hard. Plus the student’s own father was telling me that she hasn’t been able to find time to sleep! Sleep is important!” He pauses, realising that he had stood up from his seat in anger as he rose his voice and sits back down again.

“Mr Smythe those are some drastic claims! Where’s your evidence?” The principal yells at him. “Mrs Jones has been teaching here much longer than you have been assisting and in 7 years she has never been a problem! You however have been a problem on my radar a good few times in a little over 2 years!”

“That's because she’s good at blackmailing her students into not telling on her or getting on her nice side - which I’ve never even seen.” The principal rolls her eyes. Oh, how professional this conversation is getting - with no help from him.

“All I’ve gotten from this conversation so far is that you are insulting one of my best teachers in your downtime and that Mrs Jones is failing tests on purpose and preventing students from sleeping. You’ve told me the latter a million times with no conclusive evidence!” He pulls out a folder and pulls out two tests. Patrice immediately picks them up and looks them over.

“Where did you get these?” The principal takes them and looks them over herself.

“From students. They had practically the same answers but you favourited one over the other. One got a higher grade than the other. I wonder why?”

“Do you have the answer key on you?” He quickly pulls out the printed copy he has but before he can hand it to the principal, Patrice snatches it off him. The principal quickly turns to her. “Mrs Jones, the answer key.” It takes a few moments for Patrice to hand it over. “Thank you.”

“If you look through then you’ll see that on question 5, both students put the same answer.” He waits as she flips through the tests and finds the correct page.

“That’s correct.” He takes great joy in the fact that Patrice’s face is slowly going white.

“And if you look in the answer key, you’ll see that the answer both students gave is correct.” She nods again before looking closely at the papers. “But only one was marked as correct. Why is that?”

“Yes, why is that, Mrs Jones?” The principal turns to Patrice, who wrings her hands and gives a fake smile.

“A simple mistake in marking I’ll admit. Only a one-off though.” The principal nods in response and Coran groans into his hands. Are you fucking kidding me? She’s still trying to get out of the situation. At least he came prepared.

“The same thing happened to question 7, 11 and 15. On 25 the favourited student got the answer wrong - it says so in the answer key that is was incorrect but the answer was marked as correct. This may just be one test but the student I was talking to has told me that this has been going on ever since she joined the class and maybe even before. Got an answer for that Mrs Jones?” He’s certain he’s backed Patrice into a corner and the principal seems to believe him for once.

“You’ve photocopied those tests, how do you know the markings weren’t fixed for the other questions?” She says in response picking up the tests.

“Got the physical copies with the exact same markings, Patrice. Shut your mouth.” The principal opens her mouth to try and calm him down but Patrice responds before she can.

“Fuck off Coran, this is clearly all faked and a one-off. You don’t have any evidence apart from this.”

“Patrice I have come up to the principal with all sorts of evidence before and this is only the tip of the iceberg of the shit that you have pulled to stay in this fucking school.” He stands up and walks over to her and folds his arms. She stands up and stares him right in the eye.

“Honestly, Coran you aren’t even a teacher. You’re a teaching assistant and fucking horrid at your already shit job. Explains why you have such a horrid apartment.” The two of them are so close that he can smell her shitty breath. He steps back and leans against the wall.

“Patrice you’ve barely held together your marriage. Surprised you still have this job.” At this, the principal jumps out of her seat and grabs the two of them and pulls them together.

“Alright, both of you shut the fuck up.” Patrice sits back down in her seat and Coran walks back to his desk. He doesn’t sit. “This is a professional environment and the two of you are being petty twats. So shut it and carry on arguing after the school days over. Mrs Jones, you will be seeing me in my office later to discuss this. Mr Smythe, I’ll be seeing you as well to discuss something different after her. I’ll also be keeping these. She gestures to the test papers. “If you have anything else relating to them then I’d like to see them by the end of the day.” With that, she walks out the door, the test papers in hand. Patrice stares at the door in disbelief and then back at him. Her face is blank but it quickly changes to one of anger.

“You motherfucker.” She leans over his desk and whispers. “You hear me? You’re a motherfucker.”

“Get more creative insults, Patrice.” He replies. Honestly, she’s kinda pathetic. All Patrice does is narrow her eyes even further and snarl.

“You’re a son of a bitch. I will ruin you, Coran.”

“That’s nice, Patrice. Get out of my office.” He pushes her out the door, locks it before returning to sorting through his folders. He hears her bang on the door a couple of times before she leaves. Good. She’s annoying. He might’ve sparred her on a bit and been an ass, but she still reacted and showed her true colours as a huge bitch.

At least the principal believed him this time. He sinks down into his chair and glances at the clock and at his plan for the day. He’s got to overview a lecture in around half an hour than actually do one himself 2 hours later and then another overview straight after. A test or two and some other things that fill up his day.

It feels like only a moment has passed when he finds himself in the lecture hall beside the professor. She smiles at him and gestures to where her laptop is. He sits down and pulls up the files necessary for the lecture and waits for the students to come in. He fully expects something to go wrong as, the day, for the most part, had been chill if he didn’t count the part where he collapsed from sleep deprivation, anything involving the cat and the cryptic messages. Mostly normal.

So, of course, everything basically went wrong in the lecture. The first thing was that Allura was in this lecture. When she saw him, her face went pale before going a thousand miles an hour by facial expression alone. He waves to her and she gestures wildly back. He’s as confused as she is, to be honest. He hears the small ping from his phone and glances at it. A message from Allura.

 _“What the fuck dude? We thought you were dead!!!”_ He quickly types an answer back to her.

**_“i might've died. sorry for not answering my phone. communication errors and such.”_ **

_“What do you mean by might’ve died??? You can’t die and come back!!!”_

**_“i honestly have no clue. talk after the lecture k?”_ ** He looks up and she nods at him before putting her phone away. Her worry is clearly written on her face and she looks seconds away from a panic attack but she gives him a thumbs up. He doesn’t believe she’s okay but he looks back to the laptop and doing what’s needed. The professor starts off the lecture and all goes well for precisely 3 minutes. Maybe even longer. Or not even at all.

The doors to the lecture hall burst open and his eyes briefly flicker over. It’s a kid wearing a baseball cap and baggy pants. He doesn’t recognise his face but the professor welcomes the kid in with a brief lecture on being late. The kid seems to be hiding something but he can’t tell what from the distance. So he pays the kid no attention. Maybe that was his first mistake. The lecture resumes as normal and the late arrival poses no threat.

Then a gunshot goes off. It’s loud and he can see it strike the wall an inch or so from the professors head - clearly aimed in an attempt to kill. She screams. More than a handful of kids scream and the lecture hall goes from calm quiet to loud madness and he immediately springs to his feet and runs in the direction of the late arrival. It takes him a moment or so to get up the stairs but when he reaches him, he can clearly see a small gun is in the teen's hands and is pressed against the temple of the person next to him. The teenager smiles. Coran’s heart stops. This was the last thing he ever wanted to do, but if everything else is going wrong then this would be on the list.

He grabs the kids arm and wrenches it around to face him. The teens face snaps around and his face immediately turns to anger.and he tries to pull the trigger as Coran tries to pull the gun from the teen's hands. It kicks in his hands and he shoots himself in the foot. The gun flies from his hand from the kick and the shock/pain of shooting yourself in the foot and the teen grabs it again. The pain in his foot is awful and the wound itself is worse. The skin flares up around it and blood pours through it. Almost like the hole was always there. It hurts to walk but he tries to. He needs to get the gun from the teenager. It might not be the wisest decision he’s ever made but he’s the closest and he’s the closest adult in the area so he might as well try.

While he screams, the teen has aimed for the other kids but misses. Most of the other teens are hiding underneath the chairs or trying to force the doors open. He stands up and makes his way towards the nearest door and aims for the crowd around it. Coran shuffles forward as quickly as he can trying to reach the kid. He’s way too far ahead of him when the teen shoots again. It drills itself into the wall, barely scraping over someone's head. As the teen readies himself against the kick, Coran gets close enough and punches the kid square in the back. It’s not strong enough to completely knock the kid over as he quickly stabilizes himself on the chairs but it’s good enough to get the gun again. Coran holds it tightly and aims it at the teen. He laughs.

“You can’t shoot any better than me. Just try.” Coran narrows his eyes. He doesn’t want to kill the kid but he can’t let anyone get injured. 100 is worse than 1 in the long run, no matter how much one death alone hurts.

“Try anything and this goes straight through your head.” He whispers. He knows he could never kill. He knows that for a fact. But he can always try. The teen laughs again.

“You couldn’t. You’re soft old man.” The police couldn’t arrive on the scene any sooner. It’s all too real as the teen gets driven away and the lecture hall gets quietened down. No kids were injured but his foot injury is enough for him to be driven to the hospital. He barely pays attention but he sees Allura in the panic after the attack. She’s okay at least. He smiles at that. Everyone’s okay. For now at least.


	7. Human

It’s much later when he’s lying in his hospital bed that he realises... The mother fucking cat and the cryptic ass scroll. He’d completely forgotten after Patrice.  _ “Keep everyone safe and secure. If anyone dies under your protection then all is void and the cycle repeats”.  _ The cat must’ve known the shooting was going to happen. And it didn’t do shit other than relying on him to stop it from killing anyone in the lecture hall.

The scene shifts. Everything slows to a halt and the cat appears in front of him. “You caught on fast. Congrats.”

“That was fucking bullshit, you hear me?” He yells. “You’re a supernatural entity and you relied on me to save a lecture hall full of children from an armed shooter?”

“Precisely. And you did it in one go. That’s good.” He’s this close to trying to strangle the cat or kill it. 

“Son of a bitch.” He whispers as he sits back in the bed. The cat crawls closer.

“So you did it. What’cha think of the voicemail?”

He remembers back to the voicemails, how scared his friend felt and the pure worry, confusion and fear he had felt after listening to each one. “They were strange.”

“Really? Strange is the word you’d use to describe your best friends pain, confusion and worry and your subsequent reaction! I thought you loved him more than that.” The cat inspects its sharp claws and rolls over on the bed. “Shame.” His face goes bright pink at the cat's words but he quickly covers it. He isn’t going to discuss his feelings for his best friend of ages with a shitty cat who likes to mess with him. It’d just give it more material to work with and more ways to make him suffer. 

“I’m not talking about it.” The cat sighs before rolling right up to his face.

“How many injuries did you get?”

“I got shot in the foot. A couple of bruises as well. Doubt you care though.”

“You’re right. I’m not that interested.” With a wave of its paw, his foot injury fixes itself and the bruises go away. He moves his foot left, right, up and down and it feels fine. The only hint that there used to be a bullet hole there is the blood on the sheets and the discarded bloody bandage. It’s strange.

“Why’d you heal it then? Don’t you like my suffering?” The cat turns its head suddenly to the side and he feels the injury open up again with a tremendous amount of pain before suddenly closing up again. “Nevermind…”

“If you remember my scroll then you know you’ve got 6 more tasks to complete, right? I’ll give you your next one.” The cat then proceeds to climb down to his feet - specifically to the one he previously injured and stabs right where the hole used to be. It hurts just as much and he can see the wide grin spread across the cat's face. It’s such a sadist. The hole doesn’t close up this time as the cat pulls out the scroll. The first message has a tick next to it and the next message is slightly less cryptic than the previous one. “Figure out what’s in the river next to the high school.” 

“The river?” He asks. “The high school has a river?” He’s been to the high school many times and he’s never seen a river. Not today, yesterday or twenty years ago. The cat smiles mischievously at him and draws a small map on the scroll. 

“There’s a small river around the back where someone’s been dumping something in the water. I want to know what’s being dumped in there.” The drawing disappears after the cat finishes its sentence. “Any more questions?”

“Why do you want to know? Can’t you figure it out yourself?” He asks, sitting up from the hospital bed and wandering over to the window. Birds froze midflight, people walking around beneath the hospital walls all give him the chills. He moves back away from the window, choosing to sit on it. The cat leaps of the bed and walks over to him.

“I can’t go down to the human world myself. I need to send mortals like yourself. Besides, this river is important to me and it’s being tainted by something. I need to know what. This is simple.”

With that the world unfreezes and the cat disappears. The room around him dissolves before he finds himself back on his kitchen floor like he was the previous morning. The cold coffee and shattered mug still near his feet. He gets to his feet. Might as well get this over and done with. 

It takes him a while to get his stuff together and start to walk towards the river. When he checks the time it’s Wednesday and he has the day off due to unspecified events from what an email from the principal says. He finds it suspicious. It’s not a type of cycle that loops the same day - does it just loop him through the days with the same events from previous loops affecting the current ones. Either bullshitty way this works, it was Tuesday and now it’s Wednesday. He finds it easy enough to make his way to the high school, wearing a t-shirt, jeans and a jacket. The woods behind the school were off limits but the cat was breaking the laws of space and time, he can break the school's laws. Maybe.

It takes him the better part of the day to even locate the river and even longer to locate the person throwing stuff into the river. The river is an ugly brown colour and large bags of garbage float down nearly every part of it. Disgusting. He already wants to go home but he still needs to find out what the person’s doing.

He can’t identify the person but they look young. Brown hair tied up into a bun with a bandana covering their mouth. They wear a black hoodie and jeans and kneel over a black garbage bag, stuffing something inside. He can’t see what it is from the distance, he’s at. He tries to get closer. He steps on a stick. It crunches beneath his feet. The person turns around. They lock eyes with him and start to advance on him. He slowly backs away but he hits a tree. The person corners him before lowering their bandana and smiling at him. 

“Whatcha doing here?” They ask him. Their voice is light and airy but sinister. He decides to respond but only tell the truth in bits and pieces.

“Looking for something for someone. I’ve found them, so I’ll be out of your way now.” They laugh and pull a knife out of their pocket. He shrinks further against the tree. Fuck.

“I’m afraid that’s not a good answer - too vague for my liking. Did you see anything?”

“I saw all the garbage bags you have. Why’d you have so many?” Small talk might distract them enough for him to run he tells himself. They still don’t believe him.

“Guess you saw too much then. Might as well deal with you.”

“What do you mean?” He asks. Please don’t kill him. They put their knife to his neck. Fuck.

“You’ve gotta die dude.” With that, they stab him in the neck. He grasps for the knife but they stab it into his hand and he screams. He slumps against the tree but kicks the feet from underneath his potential killer. They scream and fall to the ground. He takes the moment to flee but he feels a hand around his foot. He steps on it and runs for his life. He’d rather live than find out what’s in their garbage bags, thank you very much. 

Of course, he isn’t that lucky. He feels pain emerge from his back and sess four knives planted into his back. He screams as he falls to the floor. His hand hurts, his necks still bleeding and now there are at least four wounds in his back. None of them are particularly deep or wide but the one in his neck will probably kill him if he doesn’t stop the flow of blood soon. He doesn’t get the chance as he’s dragged back into the forest and sees the person again. He tries to spit at them but it isn’t very effective. They laugh at him. They seem to be talking to him but he can’t hear, see or anything really. All he can do is feel a tremendous pain and he is certain he’s going to die. The last thing he registers is a knife pressing down on his shoulders. 

When he next opens his eyes, he’s back in the white space. The cat sits in front of him, staring down at something. He glares at the cat.

“I just got fucking murdered by a psycho!” He yells. “I’m pretty sure they put my body parts in a garbage bag and dumped it in the river! Jesus fucking Christ!” The cat laughs at him.

“Good to know you got murdered. Unfortunately, you didn’t really see what was in the bags.” The cat inspects its nails. “So..”

“You asked me to see what was in the river. It’s fucking garbage bags. Didn’t say shit about what was in the bags and I even saw who was dumping them there in the first place! I’m pretty sure there are body parts in them. Is that not good enough for you?” His voice rises with each word and by the end, he’s screaming at the top of his lungs. The cat simply stares at him, calmly. It licks its paws.

“Loopholes. That passes I guess.” It says dully, planting a tick next to the message on the scroll. “Kinda boring to be honest. Not as thrilling as the last one. Would’ve been better if you had been awake for the amputation.”

“Amputation?” He asks. He shivers. They didn’t… Unfortunately, from the cat's nasty grin they probably did amputate his corpse. Gross.

“Yep! They ripped you apart and put your body parts in a garbage bag. Kinda weird way to go in all honesty.”

“This never mentioned me dying.” He snarls. He would never have agreed to do this if the cat had mentioned he would die. Then again, he never even agreed to do it in the first place, he’d technically been forced into. Good job, Coran, your life is in such good hands.

“True true. Though I didn’t really expect you to die. You could’ve down this without dying but then again, they would’ve heard you eventually.” In his opinion, their hearing seemed normal - good maybe but not supernaturally good. If it was that good then he would’ve been caught before he stepped on the twig - they would’ve heard him sneaking around. The cat looks up at him, reading his thoughts. “I’ve met them before. They hear everyone.”

“I thought you said you couldn’t go down yourself.” The cat rolls its eyes.

“I’ve had mortals like you before investigating that area. All of them ended up dead in a garbage bag.” 

“Then why'd you make me do it!” He’s getting really sick of the cat’s bullshit at this point. The only answer he gets from the cat is a simple shrug. 

It’s definitely a sadist.


	8. Barely

The next two cycles are as much of a pain as the river. The third message says for him to go to the cafe and watch the road. No mention of time passage, how long he needs to wait for something to happen nada. So he gets ready and sits down to wait. He goes and teaches then comes back and waits for more. Nothing happens. The cars zip by down the road like usual and nothing new happens. It’s getting late and he gives up. He’s been watching the same old road for around 5 hours and nothing interesting has happened whatsoever. So he leaves.

Or he tries to leave because the moment he decides to leave is the moment a truck passes through the road. He’s certain it won’t crash or anything but then he gets run over by the truck. The cat laughs at him for wasting the whole day because anytime he tried to cross the road he would’ve been run over. He resists the urge to slap the cat, but it’d be useless. The cat’s a supernatural entity - a slap wouldn’t do shit.

After the car crash is a slightly more disturbing one. He can’t remember what the cat had told him to do exactly but it involved investigating somewhere. That place turned out to be a mafia headquarters and he got the shit kicked out of him. He felt close to death from his injuries when two police officers passed by the alleyway he was in. They thought he was roadkill. They ignored him and he died. He was extremely annoyed at that one because it didn’t even feel like it had a purpose other than to kick the shit out of him and let him die. 

The final three, however, have a little more depth than the first few - meaning he doesn’t just get the shit kicked out of him and dies. The fifth message tells him to “Be the first one to taste the food at the new food stand. Don’t let anyone else taste it before you do.” The message gets his suspicions up but the cat assures him that nothing bad will happen and it won’t be like the last few.

“I don’t trust this not to kill me.” He says to the cat. It licks its paws.

“Thought as much.” And he wakes up on the floor for the fifth time. It’s getting a little dull at this point but he might as well do it. He calls in sick to the school and starts to look around for any new food stand. The people he asks mostly look at him as if he’s crazy but eventually a kind old lady tells him about a famous chef cooking some food for the local people in an hour. He heads down there and, sure enough, he sees it almost immediately

It’s a caravan with an open front with the chef inside preparing some food. A moderately sized crowd swarms the front - around 50 people in attendance. He slides into the crowd and looks towards the chef. He doesn't recognise the chef at all but they seem to know their stuff - preparing the food in an organised but flashy style. At times it’s mesmerising to watch but at the same time, he just waits for the end patiently. 

He watches the crowd to pass the time and nearly everyone is in awe at the scene. He sees a lady around his age scanning the crowd and they both lock eyes for a second. He sees the boredom in her eyes and nods his head. He understands. Then they both return to watching the crowds amazement and wonder. Eventually, the end rolls around and the chef has a buffet amount of food ready to be eaten by the adoring crowd. It all looks amazing and delicious but he smells something off about the food. It isn't suspicious but he can tell something seems to be masked by many layers of spices and herbs. Something is wrong with the food, but he doesn’t know what. He pushes his way to the front and when the chef asks who wants free samples he makes himself an option. A small plate of food is presented to him and he hesitates slightly on eating it. Then he remembers that even if he does die, it probably won’t matter in the end. So he puts some in his mouth and swallows.

That’s when it hits him. 

The food was poisoned. 

Of course.

He shouldn't have guessed otherwise.

He can’t tell what type but it must be a fast acting one as he collapses to the ground in pain. His head hurts, his stomach hurts and he feels ready to throw up. The crowd around him look scared and worried and the chef only seems mildly confused. His head spins wildly and the world around him turns into a blur. He screams before vomiting on the floor. He can’t tell if it’s the food, blood, saliva or something else. There’s a hand on his shoulder but he can barely tell where or who it is. People are saying things but he can’t hear a thing. People are screaming things but he still can’t hear anything but a choir of endless screams, yells and shouts. All demand justice and answers.  Everything hurts, so badly. 

Then he goes still and doesn’t move. He lies in a pile of his own vomit.

The crowd around him are screaming in fear, shock. A smashed plate lies next to the collapsed man with the sample food only half eaten. The chef only seems mildly surprised at the situation. A lady around the man's age storms up to the chef and demands an explanation, answers or just a clue as to what just happened. The chef hasn’t got one. She screams. The crowd screams. The man lays deathly still. When the police arrive, they identify the food as being poisoned and arrest the chef. None of the crowd had taken any samples before the man so he was the only one to die. It was lucky in a way but also sad. 

Coran, on the other hand, was only mildly pissed. “Food poisoning! Of course, it was food poisoning. I should’ve seen that coming from a million miles away!” The cat pulls out the scroll again and looks it over. “Am I gonna get one where I don’t die or was that just for the first one?”

“It depends. Do you want to die or not?”

“Of course I don’t.”

“Then defend your life. Protect it. Stop throwing yourself at death’s door.” Coran stares blankly at the cat for a few seconds before turning away. He doesn’t exactly want to die - it’s painful as shit - but is he really doing all he can to stop it? It’s too late to think of another way around a situation but he reflects. 

“This is bullshit.” He whispers into the ceiling of the void. “This is all bullshit.” He’s told himself this a thousand times. It helps to keep him sane and not succumb to the madness. It’s not really working as well now as it used to do in the beginning but it helps.

“Are you ready for your penultimate task? This one’s going to be fun.” He sighs. The cats view of fun is how exciting his death is. Which means he’s going to die horribly. That’s so much fun for the cat - not so much fun for him.

“Absolutely not.”

“Good to hear.” The cat unrolls the scroll and reads out the message to him. “Reconnect with old friends. Get the bartenders ring.” 

“Old friends?” He asks. The cat shrugs

“People you haven’t seen in a while. Or just simply old friends you grew apart from. Or they grew apart from you.”

“Shut up.” He stands up and dusts himself down. “I’m not dealing with your bullshit trying to make me self-conscious and sad. I’d rather throw myself into dying again.” 

“That’s the spirit!” The cat cheers as it fades away and or once he doesn’t wake up on the floor next to his shattered mug and cold coffee. Instead, he wakes up outside a very familiar bar. He dreaded that this was what the cat had meant but he was certain it didn’t know. But it did. 

He was outside the Winslow family tavern. He used to hang out here all the time back in college with a group of people he used to call friends. They stole, they robbed they did all sorts of illegal crimes. It was fun back then but now he regrets every single second he spent with them. They were never his friends but they were good at making it seem like they were. Of course, the cat would want to make him relive those old memories.

He hated them and the cat wanted him to reconnect with his old friends? No. Absolutely not. As he turns to leave, the door slams open and he’s spotted by the bartender. He smiles at him and Coran tries not to run. “Long time no see.” The bartender says to him. “I haven’t seen you in a decade.” He’s been avoiding the entire group for a decade but he can’t exactly say that to the bartenders face. He has to be nice.

“Yeah, it sure has been a while.” He shrugs, letting himself be guided indoors. It smells just like it used to - of pine and birch. He wants to burn it down and never see this place again. He could perhaps. But he knows he couldn’t. He could’ve done it a decade ago. But he never did and never will. The interior is mostly the same with a few more modernised decorations but overall it has the same atmosphere about it. It’s mostly empty but he recognises two of the people sitting near the bar - Rolo and Nyma. Of course, it had to be them Unfortunately, they recognise him as well. Nyma scowls at him. Oh, how worse can his luck get today?

“Rolo, Nyma I’m sure you recognise him.” The bartender says, walking behind the bar and resting their hands on the table. Nyma sits on the left and she turns around to face him. Her blonde hair rests on her shoulders in long pigtails. She scans him over and scoffs. 

“Barely. He looks so professional.” She waves her hand and the bartender gets her a drink. She sips it slowly, not taking her eyes off him for a second. He knows what drink she orders, she always orders the same drink. It’s unlikely she’s changed it in a decade.Rolo turns to him and puts his hands on his knees and tilts his head.

“What happened to you, Smythe? You haven’t come here for the last decade. Did you forget about us?” Coran shifts his feet and looks away. Not technically but probably. Rolo narrows his eyes and stands up. His hair is dyed a stark white and still short as ever. At least he still isn’t wearing baseball caps backwards. He claps a hand on Coran’s shoulder and pulls him towards a seat between the two of them. Nyma turns to face him again. 

“Think he did. Whatcha been up to buddy?” She finishes her drink and places it down on the counter and looks at him. He can’t see Rolo but he feels as if he’s doing the same thing.

“Better things than you, probably.” He says bluntly. Nyma looks at him funny for a second before bursting out in laughter.  

“No way you are.” Nyma laughs at him. “You know how I was talking about wanting a high up job? Got it. I’m an overseer for a company that moves stuff for people. Gives me more opportunities to get my hands dirty.” Rolo puts his hand on her shoulder and smirks at him.

“She really pulled through, my man. I’ve still got my boring old job but hey. We’re doing better than you.” Coran folds his arms. They always did this back then. Always one-upping him - or trying to.

“You’re both still doing illegal things to pay off your debts so I think I’ve taken a few more strides forward.” He watches as the blood runs from their faces and he slightly smiles. They’ve got more than a few million dollars in debt and he never really accumulated any. He as just roped in to help pay it off. It was fun the first few years. Then the crimes became bigger and more illegal. 

“How’d you know we aren’t paying for it out of our own pockets?” Nyma asks, putting on a fake sing-songy voice. His silence makes her smile. “Did you just assume? Silly Smythe.”

“I know because that sounds like something you’d never do and there’s a ton of news articles with you in. Granted, Rolo’s in more but you’re still there. You aren’t innocent.” 

“Claims claims, claims. Smythe buddy, let’s put this behind us.” Rolo puts a hand on his shoulder and orders a few drinks. “Drink with us, like old times?”

“Yeah like old times!” Nyma chimes in from her side of the bar. Then her face turns to one of disgust though not aimed at him. “Eww, you’re ordering a beer? Get champagne.” Rolo rolls his eyes and orders champagne for her. She smiles. “Softie.”

Three glasses are placed on the counter by the bartender and he watches as Rolo and Nyma snatch up their respective drinks. They nudge him to collect his and he stares at the glass. He can’t tell what type it is but it’s clearly alcoholic. Could be poisoned. Could contain some kind of drug. Could just be normal. He grabs it all the same and Nyma nods. 

“Do you wanna make a toast or something?” The bartender suggests.

“Sure,” Rolo says and turns to face them. “To our reunion.” He says it in such a way that it feels as if he doesn’t care. No emphasis where it should be. Nyma lifts her glass and downs it. Rolo moves to do the same, then realises that Coran hasn’t really touched his drink at all. “Bud, it’s a toast. **Drink**.”

He sloshes the unknown substance around in the glass but doesn’t put it any closer to his lips. Nyma looks quizzically at him. 

“Do you need our help to drink? **Again**?” She says, leaning forward to grab his glass. He holds it tighter and closer to his person. She narrows her eyes. “Stop playing around dude.”

“You heard her. **Drink** ” Rolo says, also reaching for the glass. He stands up and holds the glass out. He’s holding it tightly as if it was something precious when it’s worthless in the grand scheme of things. Rolo and Nyma look at him expectantly. “Come on.”

He drops the glass on the floor. It shatters on impact but before he can hear it shatter, Rolo has stood up and grabbed him by his shirt. 

“What the fuck dude?” Rolo’s shaking him and Nyma's stood up as well glaring at him from over Rolo’s shoulder. “That was basically a free drink and you dropped it on the floor!”

“I’m fucking leaving.” He says, wrenching himself away from the other man's grip and walking towards the door. 

Then the bottle smashes against his head just as his fingers brush the door. He crumbles to the floor and sees the bartender from across the room. He’s angry, understandable, but even Nyma and Rolo seem surprised. It’s in this tense moment that Coran remembers the reason he even came to this god awful place - the son of a bitch’s ring. A decade ago, he never would’ve been seen dead with one on but now he can clearly see one on the middle finger of the man's left hand. 

He storms over to the bartender and picks up one of Nyma’s glasses. The bartender grabs another wine glass and the two smash against each other and the glass goes everywhere and anywhere. He feels quite a few bits in his arms and legs and maybe one or two in his face but he tries not to let that slow him down. He grabs another glass and aims for the bartenders left hand. He misses and the glass smashes down on the counter as the bartender aims for his head with another wine bottle. He doesn’t miss as the liquid comes pouring down his face, staining his hair with its contents mixing with his blood in a strange way. He grabs a wine bottle of his own and aims for the man’s left hand again but now it’s more hidden than before and the bottle smashes against the bartenders hip. The action knocks the man onto the floor and Coran grabs another glass to smash when he’s kicked away and against the wall. His vision blacks out for a second but he’s still conscious. His movement is slowed and his vision is slowly going but he isn’t lying on the floor close to dead. Improvement. Rolo starts to make his way over but Nyma is quicker and grabs a bottle herself, standing in between the bartender and him.

“Smythe you’re being a really big piece of shit right now.” She growls before running at him. He sidesteps picks up a glass and hurls it at the bartender before Nyma hurls her bottle at the back of his neck. He collapses to the ground, incredibly bloody at this point. The bartender is also o the floor and he tries to use his remaining working body parts to crawl over before Rolo smashes one last bottle against the back of his head. It doesn’t take long before he passes out and while he can’t see the scene he can imagine the grins on their faces burned into his mind. 

 


	9. Survived

It takes forever and a half for him to regain consciousness after his death and it’s hell. He can’t see, feel, touch, smell or anything but he’s there. Somehow. And even without knives sticking out of every limb, it feels like torture. The cat biding his time, waiting for him to snap.

He hates it. Nearly every thinking thought is about a way to get out. He never begs the cat to let him out. That’d be even worse.

However, when the torture does end, the  first thing he sees is the cat in the empty void. It’s as tall as him now with its claws elongated to more than a few inches long. He screams. It turns it’s head sharply in his direction, angry.

It swipes at him with a claw. He backs away in time and watches as the ground where he just was is ripped into pieces. He can see a colour other than white - in fact, many colours. Almost like the universe was being ripped through. The cat snarls angrily at him before finally making sense.

 **“I asked you to do one thing! _One fuckin thing_! And what do you do?”**  The cat swipes at him again and now he’s on his feet it’s much easier to back away.  **“You fucking _died_! Again! Useless shitty mortal!”**  The cat uses multiple claws and he watches as the white void rips apart. It doesn’t stitch itself back together but he watches as the rips get worse and worse. More and more colour pours into the void.

“Do it yourself! Put yourself in my fucking shoes you son of a bitch!” He yells, backing away hastily. 

The cat seems to be more enraged and grows taller and taller becoming more of an eldritch monstrosity with each passing second. It screams and it’s the worse thing he’s ever heard. He covers his ears and he can still hear it pounding through his head. It sounds even louder than it was without his ears covered and he feels his body curl up into a ball, as tightly as his bones allow. It's uncomfortable but he'd try anything to shut up the scream. The cat screams and screams and it seems to last forever and ever. Almost as long as the wait between waking up here. Almost as agonising.

Eventually the scream ends, but it takes him ages to realise. The scream echoed through his head so loudly and even now he can still hear it. But now, he isn’t in the void. He’s in his bedroom, lying on his bed. With a quick look around his body, he feels bandages wrapped around his head and hands. Injuries from the bar fight. He shudders. A decade ago it would’ve been worse. Maybe they’ve learned. Slightly. 

He stands up and surveils his room. The beds sheets are neat and tidy and the small desk is also neat. He walks over and sees his pencils, pens and what not all neatly lined up. His slippers are nearly lined up against his bed. His pillows aren’t in a jumble. The crossstiching Alfor gave him for a birthday years back he has on his wall isn’t croked. It’s been straightened. The only thing not neat is the door to the balcony he never touches. It’s still as dirty and untouched as before - which wasn’t a lot. However, with the high standard the rest of the room is now in, it sticks out like a sore thumb.

Someone’s clearly been in his room. He’s never had such a clean room - or at least when he wakes up. It just doesn’t look like a room he’s inhabited. Apart from the door. That’s what grabs his attention.

When he got the apartment originally, the balcony door was opened and he saw the view outside. Except it wasn’t a nice view, birds kept coming in and shitting on his stuff and more. So he fused the door shut and it never opened again. He walks over to the door and nudges it. It budges.

Someone’s removed the fusing on the door. 

But why? It’s the most useless thing the inteuder could’ve done with the apartment. Why would someone want to go out on the balcony? 

It only takes him a few moments of thinking before he’s forcing the door open and opens it fully for the first time in at least a year. A lot of dust flys around but when it clears he can see the balcony almost exactly how it was when he first saw it. Two chairs and a table with a bar to hold on to as he looks upon the rest of the world. Or just the street below. And the houses across from him. Boring.

Apart from the cat, licking it’s paw on that bar. He pauses for a moment before rushing forward and pushing the cat off. Or at least, he tries to. His hands go straight through it and it just stares at him and smirks.

**”It’s not going to be that easy, you know. It’s be easier for me to push you than for you to push me.”**

”You’re about the size of my knee, but sure. Everything else has been complete and utter bullshit so why not this?” He folds his arms and lifts his knee as an example. The cat jumps down and leaps onto the table. 

 **“Not everything has been complete and utter bullshit. After all, did I bullshit you?”** His expression tells the cat all it needs to know. **“Okay, okay, maybe I lied a few times but it was all leading up to the greater truth! A few white lies never hurts.”**

Coran laughs. For the first time in a while, he laughs. It’s not as genuine as he wants but it works. The cat looks mortified. He calms down and looks the cat straight in the eye. “Liar. That’s the buggest lie you’ve ever told. You lied a good few hundred times.”

The cat looks at him for a moment before breaking eye contact. **“Okay then. If I’m such a liar then please do tell me where I lied. Should I lie to you right now?”** He doesn’t respond but the cat continues anyway. **“You care about Allura. You care about her friends. You are a good person who won’t try and kill someone for his own personal gain. You have never loved Alfor and have not had a huge crush for, hmm let’s say _ever since you_** _ **met**_ **!”**

The silence between the two of them is haunting. Coran’s mind is overthinking of how the cat got into his own personal self doubts, fears and secrets while the cat drinks all his silent suffering in.

 **”Am I wrong?”** It whispers. **“Was everything I just said true?”**

”Shut up.” His words are quiet and whisper like. He can tears pricking at his eyes and he tries to hold them in - not wanting to let the cat see him cry. 

 **“Well of course it isn’t. You just don’t want to admit your true feelings. Your inner thoughts. The things you keep sealed away in the back of your head. All the things you’d never say aloud but they’re there. They’re there and they’re ugly.”** The cat advances closer and closer towards him, morphing into a human shape with every step. It looks straight out of a horror film. He wishes he could pause it and throw it away never to be seen. Except he still can’t. He has to sit there and deal with what this fucked up reality throws at him. 

It stops and he takes a good look at what it morphed into. It’s Alfor. Just as he last saw him but his beautiful face replaced with one of the worse. ‘Alfor’ grins at him and speaks with Alfor’s voice.

**”Like what you see?”**

“No.” Bile piles up in the back of his mouth and he refrains the urge to spit it out. ‘Alfor’ smiles at him and claps a hand on his shpulder. It’s solid and nothing like the ghost like cat his hand passed through earlier. “No I fucking don’t.”

” **Really?”** ‘Alfor’ says. **“I thought you’d prefer this.”** It grabs his hand. **“Don’t you?** ”

He wrenches his hand away and wipes it on his jeans. “Absolutely not. This is worse. This is the nightmare scenario. Turn back!” He yells the last words and starts to back away to the balony door. He’s had enough of this. He just wants it all to go back. Everything to stop. 

“You want this to stop, hmm?” He turns around and ‘Alfor’ is standing there with his hands in his jacket pockets. “You really want all this to just stop?” ‘Alfor’ pulls a hand out and offers it to him. It smiles. “Make a deal with me.”

”No.” He turns back around and struggles with the door but it’s tightly locked. Fused shut again. “What did you do to the door.”

 **”Locked it. What about it?”** ‘Alfor’ shrugs and looks around the scene. He resists the urge to punch his ‘friend’ over the side of the balcony but it doesn’t seem as if he can. He’d do it in a heartbeat. 

“I’m not making a deal with you.” He snarls and goes back to the worthless task of trying to get the door open. A hand rests itsslf on his shoulder and his head whips around. “Fuck off!” 

 **“No. Make a deal with me and this can all end.”** It’s arms spread wide as if gestueing for a hug. He turns his whole body back around and sighs. ‘Alfor’ perks up. **“Good.”**

”You’ve given me no other choice other than hurtling over the side of the balcony and hoping for a quick death. Make it quick.”

“ **You want this all to end right?”** He nods, of fucking course. **“Well that’s a huge shame but I can make it happen.”**

“Welp I’m in do it. I’m sick of this.”

“I’m not finished, mortal. What I mean is that I can reverse time so that none of this happened. You could go on your merrily little life without me.”

”By me, you don’t mean Alfor, right.” ‘Alfor’ nods. “Good. If that turns out to be a lie then I swear to god.” 

**“No need to. However, if you make this deal then when you die then no paradise. I’d send your soul to hell but I can’t do that. So you’re guaranteed an endless void of nothing when you die. Forever and for all eternity. You’ll also forget completely about this whole thing. It never existed and never will.”**

“You say it like it’s a bad thing.” He considers the disadvantages of making the deal but he couldn’t care less. He’s still kinda young. Who cares about death!

**”Are you sure?”**

Coran nods.

‘Alfor’ smiles.

The two of them shake hands and the balcony fades away into the void almost instantaneous. It’s a big change from the gradual fading into dust.

 The cat morphs back into it’s basic fork and leaps on top of him. It digs it’s claws and stabs them into his brain. He cries out in pain as the cat meddles with his brain and memories as if it was a compiter circuit. Put a wire here, another one there and boom! Except instead of wires, it’s different parts of his brain. Some small hits of blood drip down onto his face and he shudders. It’ll all be over soon. Eventually it is. The cat leaps down and glares at him.

 **”Fuck off you weak ass bitch.”** It says as it’s final message and it fades away. As it leaves he realises he can’t remember anything about it. What it was, who it was. It’s voice, looks everything gone. He looks around at the place around him. It’s unfamiliar - where is he? Then it starts to fade away into specks of dust. He tries to feel it with his hand but it goes right through. As if it was a phantom. 

He finds himself kneeling by the road, glaring down at it. He slowly gets up and looks around. Café Citrouille surrounds him and he sees Alfor and Allura in the distance.

He smiles. He doesn’t know why he smiles. They run forward to meet him and they crash together in a huge hug. 

“Where were you?” Allura asks him. “We were worried! Well more like dad was worrying I was a little more chill.” Alfor nudges his daughters shoulder.

”Hey.” He turns to him. “But she right. Where the fuck were you?” Allura’s protest of langauge is unheard as Coran smirks and answers.

”Not a clue.”

And that’s all they need for an answer.

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been working on this since August and am so happy to finally show this off! Unfortunatly, during that time I fell out of Voltron so this will be the last fanfic. It’s also the longest so strap in! (I was planning on it being 10K but look where we are.)
> 
> Thank you to the lovely mods at https://coranbigbang.tumblr.com for hosting the big bang in the first place and dealing with me and my lovely partner Lily McPake for her lovely art and also for dealing with me. I also thank you readers! I appreciate everyone who comes and reads. It makes me happy and inspires me to write more. And please tell me what went wrong/what went well if you can! It’ll help me improve. 
> 
> I’ll crosspost this on tumblr eventually. I’ll link it here when I do.


End file.
